Cormac stood back to watch as some kind of order emerged from the chaos. The director, wearing a different set of slick clothes but with the same polished urgency, shouted, “Places!” and the camera operators took up positions, pointing toward a canvas lean-to set up under a stand of trees, near a weathered cabin wall. Two male actors in homespun trousers, shirts, boots, and large beards, arranged themselves in front of the cameras. One held an axe, and the two were arguing, presumably about the weather since they occasionally looked up at the sky with anguished expressions.
“If we don’t cross the pass now, we’ll never cross!” one actor solemnly told the other.
“But we can’t go on! The storm’s too bad. We’ll. . .we’ll have to wait it out.”
“Then we’re doomed!”
Both actors again gazed forlornly at the clear blue sky. The axe didn’t seem to serve much purpose. Nobody in the Donner Party had axed another member, after all. It mostly seemed to be there to show that yes, these were pioneers. Or something.
“Cut!” the director called out, and the actors sagged. One of them walked over to an assistant who offered him a cigarette.
The caution tape was still up around the cabin. Didn’t seem to bother anyone on the crew. A Forest Service pickup truck was parked across the way, hidden by the film crew’s vehicles. Annie Domingo leaned on the hood, arms crossed, scowling. She must have been the one to open the gate.
The director spotted him and moved to intercept. However much he wanted to, Cormac couldn’t ignore him. The guy was right there. He stood with his hand outstretched, and didn’t miss a beat when Cormac refused to shake it.
“Hi, I’m Ford Bellamy. And I hear you’re Cormac Bennett? Is that right? You have a couple minutes to talk?”
Cormac bristled. Small town—he could make a couple of guesses how Bellamy knew his name. “I’m busy, sorry.” He couldn’t imagine what Bellamy could have to say to him. Cormac walked around the guy, giving him a wide berth. Bellamy chased after him, still talking, like he was used to chasing after people who didn’t want to talk to him.
“Um, so. . .I understand you’re a detective investigating the Donner Party tragedy?”
Nothing obligated Cormac to talk to anyone he didn’t want to. This basic fact made his life so much easier. People so often relied on the basic politeness of others to get what they wanted, and they always seemed so surprised that Cormac just didn’t care.
Bellamy wouldn’t take the hint. “Our company produces recreations of historical events, and right now we’re making a documentary of the Donner Party. We’re interviewing local experts for the show, and we’d love to get your perspective, to maybe talk about some of the more unexplained aspects of the tragedy—”
Cormac stopped, and the guy smiled, victorious. He probably thought everyone wanted to get on film.
Cormac said, “You going to recreate that scene where Betsy Donner fed her children flesh from their own father without telling them what it was?” Amelia had floated that tidbit up from the back of his mind, and he delivered it deadpan.
What did it say about Bellamy that his smile remained fixed? “Inspiring, isn’t it, the lengths a mother will go to to ensure her children’s survival?”
“I’m not a historian, I’m not investigating the Donner Party. You don’t want to talk to me.” Again, he turned away, and again Bellamy followed. He was reaching out, like he might grab Cormac’s arm. The whole time, Domingo was watching from her truck with a kind of wide-eyed appreciation.
“But Mr. Bennett, I think you could really add something to our production. You’ll be compensated of course.”
He thought about that for half a second and decided he wasn’t that hard up. “There’s another guy you should talk to—Elton Peterson? I bet he’d love to be on your show.”
While Bellamy might have been able to keep his smile in place, he couldn’t suppress the eye roll. “That guy would like nothing better than to be our expert commentator. To be the expert commentator. But what can I say—he’s just not good in front of a camera.”
What a punchable smile Bellamy had. Cormac shook his head and tried, again, to walk away.
“But wait! You are a detective, right?”
This time, Bellamy actually grabbed his arm. Actually touched him. The only reason Cormac didn’t punch him was Amelia anticipating him and whispering, Calm, calm. . . .
So, with a great deal of calm—he thought—he stepped away from the other man and out of his grip.
The producer’s smile finally fell, as if he realized how close he’d come to injury. He blinked, owl-like, at Cormac, who continued over to Domingo. She seemed to be trying not to chuckle.
“Could have used some help there,” he said flatly.
“I wanted to see if you were really going to deck him,” she said. “What stopped you?”
“Intervention from the great beyond.” Amelia humphed at this. “So how is it everybody around here knows about me?”
“Trina at the inn likes to talk,” she said. “And she knows everyone.”
“I’m used to being a little more under the radar.”
“Too small a town for that, Mr. Bennett. So, have you found anything?”
“I was hoping to do a little work here. Didn’t expect all this.” He waved at the vans and SUVs. Some of the actors were drinking coffee now, while part of the crew cleared a spot in the underbrush to set up some lights on tripods. In broad daylight. He didn’t get it.
“Yeah, I had to let them in. They thought it would be ‘atmospheric.’” She shook her head. “They’re apparently paying the town a lot of money. But getting in the cabin shouldn’t be a problem.”
He nodded at the cabin. “What’s going to happen to it when this is all over.”
“It’s Forest Service property, so as soon as I let them sign off on it, we’ll clean it out and assign it to the next researcher.”
“That’s why you’re getting pressure to close the investigation?”
“Yeah. But I seem to be the only one who thinks this could happen again, and I can’t risk that.”
“Even if we do figure out that something weird’s going on here, I don’t know if I can guarantee it’ll never happen again. Not much about this is ever cut and dry.”
“I know,” she said, sighing.
The longer the cabin stayed empty, the dustier and lonelier it would feel.
The place could use a good cleaning. Magical and otherwise, Amelia observed.
Then why not do it? he thought in response. Clean the place, set an alarm in case that magical vortex struck again. If nothing else, they’d all feel a little better being here.
He went around the whole building, gathering up tape into a huge messy armful, then went back and dumped it in front of the truck, next to Domingo.
“Cleaning house?” she asked.
“Something like that,” he said.
All right, we’ve done this before. Salt, candles, sage.
He could almost picture Amelia rolling up her sleeves and brushing her hands. After gathering materials from her kit in the Jeep, he let her take over, stepping to the back of his own mind. She’d do the work; he’d keep watch. He could still hear and see out of the corners of her vision, sound and movement she wasn’t paying attention to while she cast the spell. He became her subconscious, tapping into an awareness she wasn’t connected to. If anything happened, he’d shout.
Some of the film crew and actors had stopped to watch him. Bellamy in particular had his hand on his chin, looking thoughtful.
Never mind, we’re here to do a job.
A circle of salt poured out of a small tin, candles at the cardinal points, a lit bundle of sage—they were running out of sage—and the words of a spell that Cormac still didn’t know by heart since half of it was in Latin and half in what Amelia said was Egyptian. He took her word for it. Three times they circled the house, and back at the north candle she kicked an opening in the salt circle and snuffed the candle w
ith her—with his—hand. And something changed, as if a breath of wind blew out from the house.
Domingo, waiting at the front of the cabin and looked around in wonder. “I felt something. What was that?”
“Check it out,” he said. Amelia retreated, and he stepped into his body again. Stretched his fingers, popped a kink out of his neck. Took a comforting breath of clean air to anchor himself. Domingo unlocked the front door and cautiously stepped in. Cormac followed.
The place still smelled musty and sad, but the sense of doom was gone. The place felt abandoned now, not cursed. Domingo sighed as if waking up from a sleep.
“It’s gone,” she said, amazed. “Whatever you did. . .it’s gone.”
Not really. The prickling on the back of his neck was still there—they still didn’t know what had caused the dank scent of dark magic in the first place. It could still come back. “One more thing I need to do,” he said.
He sorted through his pockets—he was going to have to do a major cleaning and overhaul when he got back to the room this afternoon, since he didn’t know what he had left in them anymore. But Amelia seemed to know. She knew everything.
Does the plumbing here still work?
Cormac tried the faucet at the kitchen sink, and water ran from the tap.
Even better. Water from the same place will anchor the spell even more firmly.
He held a strip of paper under the stream for a moment, just enough to soak but not so much that it would disintegrate. Following Amelia’s instructions, he tied a piece of red string around the paper strip, and tied the other end of the string to a spot in the middle of the room, to a bolt sticking out under the kitchen table. From this spot it was exposed to almost everything going on in the room, yet would be invisible to someone giving the place a cursory look-over.
He must have looked awkward, kneeling under the table, craning up to see, but this was what Amelia wanted so here he was. He closed his eyes, let out a breath—and Amelia was the one who whispered words over the ensemble of materials. Laid out a teaspoonful of incense under the paper, which went up in a flash at the touch of a match and left a spicy scent in the air.
“What is this?” Domingo had been standing watch at the open door, her attention divided between keeping an eye on the film crew outside and watching Cormac. Her nose wrinkled.
“I guess you could think of it as an early warning system,” Cormac said.
“So if this is happens again, we’ll know?”
It was a little more complicated than that. “Sure,” he said.
The strip of paper was dry now, the incense a smudge of ash on the floor, and Amelia retreated. Whatever she needed to do was done, but she had one last instruction for him.
Carefully, he tore the strip in half, left the one piece hanging under the table, and folded the other half and put it in his pocket. If something happened to the first strip, if some kind of magic affected it, the torn piece would be affected as well. They’d know, and maybe be able to get out here to see what it was.
He managed to crawl out from under the table without bumping his head, brushed off his jeans, and considered. He could almost feel the torn piece humming in his pocket, and couldn’t decide if he wanted it to go off— smoke or buzz or whatever it was going to do—or wished it wouldn’t. He just wanted to fix this.
“Now we wait.”
Domingo locked the cabin behind them with a sense of finality. “I guess that’s it then.”
Cormac looked at her. “How so?”
“Part of what’s been keeping me from letting them close the case is just how. . .wrong this place felt. That whatever happened to Arty would happen again, as long as that evil was there. Well, now it’s gone. I’m going to have to let them open the cabin back up.”
“Not sure that’s the best idea.”
“At some point we have to move on. You fixed the big problem.”
“And whatever caused that problem is still out there,” he said.
Bellamy was waiting for them outside the cabin.
“Just what exactly are you investigating up here, Mr. Bennett?’
“Oh you know, the usual.” Cormac gestured around at the crew setting up for the next bit of filming. “What’s this scene supposed to be about?”
“George Donner and James Reed are deciding if they should push on or stay and wait out the storm.”
Well, at least the dialog was on the nose. Of course this would be the storm that ended up dropping twenty feet of snow on the area. He looked around at the sun-dappled woods on a bright summer day. “Shouldn’t there be some, you know, snow?”
“We’ll CGI that in post. You know, I’m still looking for expert witnesses. I think you’d be perfect. We’ll give you the script.”
Cormac wasn’t an expert on anything, and he didn’t want to end up on TV. “No,” he said over his shoulder, walking with Domingo back to their vehicles. Just in time to get out of the way as another truck barreled up the drive and threw up gravel as it slid to a halt. Elton Peterson just about fell out of the driver’s seat. He hadn’t appeared to have changed clothes since yesterday, or maybe he just had a lot of the same flannel shirt. The historian glanced at Cormac and Domingo, blinked in what seemed to be surprise, but then stalked toward his original target: Bellamy.
Peterson leaned into his rant, just about spitting at Bellamy while pointing at the cabin.
“You don’t have permission to use this spot for your. . .your theater.”
“Actually, we do.” Bellamy waved a hand and one of his college-age PAs scurried over, holding out a clipboard like an offering. “All the Forest Service and California State Park System permissions are right here. We’ve paid to be here for a full week, and the filming license is in order. This is all publicly posted at the Forest Service Office.”
“You should be talking to me. I know this history better than anyone. Nobody from the Donner-Reed Party even stopped at this spot!”
“Sir, I need to ask you to leave,” Bellamy said patiently.
“I—I’ll give you my new book, the one I’m working on. You’ll see, what I’ve discovered—you should be talking to me!”
Bellamy called over to the ranger. “Ms. Domingo? Can we maybe call the sheriff’s department to get this guy out of here?”
Peterson managed to look both helpless and full of rage. His eyes bulged, his fists clenched. Cormac straightened, because however laughable the guy looked, he was boiling over. “You have no respect for history, for the Donner Party, for. . .for anything! People died, and this is how you honor them, with this garbage?”
“Yes, actually. We’re an educational show. Mostly.” Bellamy’s smile conveyed an awareness of little ironies.
Peterson did not appear to have a sense of irony whatsoever. He lunged at Bellamy, shouting in fury.
Half of Bellamy’s crew lurched to try to grab one or the other of the men; the other half scurried out of the way. Bellamy mostly dodged, so Peterson only clipped his jaw rather than knocking him over. The two switched places in preparation for the next go-around. Cormac chose this moment to act. The actor playing Reed was trying to wade in, but Cormac shoved him aside, grabbed Peterson’s shirt, and hauled backward. The man kicked and flailed, but Cormac stayed behind him, out of reach, and nothing connected.
With the instigator out of the mix, everyone else fell back and recovered. Bellamy had a cut lip but was grinning. He probably really did enjoy this.
Cormac dropped Peterson and stepped away, out of reach. The guy’d run out of fight and sat in the dirt, panting.
The cameramen were filming the whole time. Cormac glared at them.
“What are you doing?” Peterson yelled at him.
“Saving your ass.” The actor with the large beard and axe was standing off to the side, holding it like he might use it.
Bellamy pointed, clearly gleeful. “This is all on film. I’ll go straight to the sheriff and have you charged with assault unless you get the hell away from my sho
ot right now.”
Peterson straightened, brushing himself off. Marked Bellamy, Cormac, and Domingo like he was trying to memorize their faces. Then he climbed into his truck, slammed the door hard, and took about three Y-turns to work his way out of the drive and back to the road, while everyone stood watching and he grew increasingly flustered, bent over the steering wheel like he could use it to physically lift the car.
He might be laughable, but this worries me. The stakes here are so low, and yet—
“Thanks for your help,” Bellamy said, extending his hand to Cormac, who still refused to shake it. “I owe you one. I’ll tell you what—if you don’t want to be my expert witness, you want to be an extra? Just a bit part in the background, one of the teamsters in the party maybe.”
“No.”
He and Domingo walked away, out of earshot. Bellamy went back to the shoot, and the actors went back to worriedly looking up at the treetops as if it were snowing.
“Peterson’s really getting to be a problem. I’ll talk to the sheriff about him,” she said.
“Probably a good idea,” Cormac said. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bennett.”
He gave her a lazy salute and headed back to the Jeep.
Peterson was waiting for him at the bottom of the hill. His truck was pulled across the road; Cormac didn’t have a choice but to stop.
Elton Peterson stood by his truck, arms crossed. His manner was still hunched over and squirrelly, like he was on the cusp of something earth-shattering that was weighing him down and fraying his nerves. Cormac didn’t have time for this. But, as he expected, Peterson got right in front of him and stared him down.
“So. Did Bellamy ask you to be on his show?” Peterson demanded. He was probably trying to be calm.
Dark Divide: A Cormac and Amelia Story Page 6